The mirage lasts three minutes: Milo's 'Who Dis' opens at 130 BPM like a slammed door and, just when volume sixteen seems ready to bolt, 'Be Free' by Save The Robots and Winkar drops the pulse to 123, the calmest point of the whole trip. That is where the record truly begins: Molski's 'Hazedriftin' takes nearly eight minutes to settle its B minor groove, and DJ Gomi glances in the rear-view mirror with 'Back 2 the Old School', house of classic schooling.
The halfway mark is called 'Sonar'
The climb becomes noticeable from Nicolau Marinho's 'Take Away' onwards: 131, then 132 with 'What Do I Know' and the flash of 'Ta Ligado', two and a half minutes signed by four names at once. And right at the exact centre of the route sits JGon's 'Sonar': 138 BPM across 8:26, at once the fastest and the longest cut of the compilation, a double crown that turns the record's midpoint into its summit. From there it is all about managing the descent: 'When I Feel Like' resets the tempo at 132, and between 'Bamaba' and 'Make You Better' five consecutive major-key cuts slide down semitone by semitone, from A flat to F; Luca Martini's track, the only funky stop of the batch, caps that luminous stretch.
Inside that patch appears the most recognisable name: 'Physical', by OFFAIAH with Nevve on vocals, first released earlier this year on ALL FIRE, which billed it as pulsating low-end house for locked rooms. OFFAIAH is the alias Michael Woods launched in 2016 thanks to 'Trouble', backed by the likes of Pete Tong and David Guetta, and here he repeats the formula without breaking a sweat. TRANSIT (US)'s 'THINKING ABOUT YOU' throws the last surge at 135 before the cool-down: Dan Laino, Marco Simeone and Stanny Abram settle at 125 like someone stretching out the small hours, Essco's 'Incel' unwinds past the seven-minute mark, and David Jager's 'Olvidame' switches on the Balearic filter in C major. The close belongs to FEX (IT)'s remix of 'Under Your Skin': 126 BPM and the feeling that the record does not end — it dissolves.
Sources: ALL FIRE · Beatport · Electrobuzz
